


Warmth (The Views From The Couch Remix)

by Framlingem



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 23:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1567427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Framlingem/pseuds/Framlingem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If Dick's going to be honest with himself, he spends more time sleeping on his couch than he spends on the bed. The couch is comfortable, near the window, and generally friendlier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Warmth (The Views From The Couch Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moontyger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Warmth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122765) by [Moontyger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moontyger/pseuds/Moontyger). 



Four in the morning. The door opens and two people stumble in, entwined in each other. Dick fumbles for the door and pushes it shut with his right hand, his left hand tangled in his companion's long red hair. She's a lot taller than him, and her collarbones are gorgeous, he thinks, and he stops tilting his head back to kiss her mouth so he can tilt down to kiss her the place where her collarbones meet instead. She drags him across the floor and he stops kissing her long enough to say "the bedroom's over there, not over here, that's the living room".  
"Too far," she says, and they do a kind of dance that lands them on the couch instead, with her straddling him and his fist clutching at the blanket that's there more to hide the orange soda stain than it is for any other reason. He kisses her again, and then sits up straight and draws back.

"You're gorgeous," he says.  
"Thank you," she answers. "So are you. Let's -"  
"You're gorgeous," he says, "but I can't. I'm sorry. I saw you at the club, and you reminded me of someone. Two someones, actually, and it wouldn't be fair to you or her. Them."  
She smiles at him. "You're a good man, Dave," she says, and leans in next to him. She falls asleep like that, and he tries not to breathe her in too much.

He wakes up with the early afternoon sun streaming in through the window. His shoes from the night before -- a rare night off from crimefighting, he'd gone to feel the press of bodies in a club, unable to sleep when the sun wasn't up -- are placed neatly next to the couch, with a note on top. It says, in messy cursive, _Call me if you change your mind. Or tell them._

Dick considers the note for a while, then crumples it up and starts his afternoon equipment check. Nights off don't come around that often.

***

Dick finds himself sleeping on the couch more often than not, if he's honest. There's nothing wrong with his bed, particularly, it's just that there are people he'd like in it who aren't. It's just that he never stops loving anyone after they go separate ways, not really. And right now, they've all gone separate ways, and he loves them too much to wish them back. So the bed stays unslept-in for the most part, because Gotham is cold enough without reminding himself it could be warmer.

***

"I'm telling you, Dick, the kid's a genius!"  
Dick pulls the couch cushion off of his face and squints up at the man standing next to the couch. The general impression is red, and he hazards a guess.  
"... Wally?"  
"Who else? Listen, Iris just figured out how to--"  
"I didn't give you a key."  
"Don't need one, I can vibrate through the walls. This is your last orange soda, by the way."  
"What time is it?"  
"Ten. Hey, are you okay?"  
"Ten in the _morning_?"  
"Well, yeah."

Four hours of sleep, then. He's had four hours. He shouldn't feel this bad, he's gotten by on way less sleep before, why does his head hurt so much?  
"Wally," he says slowly, taking care over his enunciation. "Are you still vibrating?"  
"Huh? No."  
"Why're you still blurry, then?" Dick stands up, and the rest of the room goes blurry, too, and the next thing he knows Wally, with the perceptiveness and reflexes of a parent-of-two with superspeed, has whisked him to the toilet and he's depositing the contents of his stomach into it.  
"Cripes, Robbie. Too much partying last night?"  
"I..." Dick sits back, cautiously, and rubs his forehead. A boot, he remembers, and a mook wearing it. There'd been a kid. He'd gotten the kid out and dropped her off at a police station before dragging himself through the window and deciding the bed was too far away. "Something like that, yeah. Less fun."

Wally's peering at him worriedly and saying something about bed. Dick doesn't want to go to bed, he's got way too much to do today, that kid wasn't the only one. He says so.  
"If you're sure," says Wally, in a tone of voice that indicates that he, Wally, is definitely not sure and thinks Dick is an idiot. "But you're taking a nap on the couch first, soon as I soak up whatever soda hasn't sunk into it yet. Sorry about the stain, but I kind of dropped the can when you turned green."

Dick sits at one end of the couch and watches Wally get impatient over how slowly the paper towels soak up the soda from the other end, and then watches Wally leave. Wally doesn't bother opening the door, because he's Wally and can do things like that. Dick should probably check the news reports to see if any other kids have been reported missing in the last twelve hours. He's almost found the pattern. The pattern. The pattern on the couch is kind of mesmerizing, really. He should tell Wally. 

Oh, right. Wally's gone.

***

It's not just that the couch is comfortable. The furniture at Wayne Manor was comfortable, too. It's just that the couch is broken in. Maybe it's just that it's broken. The soda stain's not the only stain on it by a long shot, and one of the cushions has an awkwardly-mended rip in it from where Dick forgot he was still holding a batarang when he collapsed face-first onto it after his eighty-third hour of surveillance. It's _his couch_ , and it's always there. 

The bed is solid oak, weighs a ton, and was a very well-meaning housewarming gift from Bruce.

***

Dick falls asleep on the couch, alone. He checks his equipment, alone. Months go by. Wally's got a thing with the twins, which is absolutely where his priorities should be, Lian's going through a difficult time at school and that's taking up Roy's time (and besides, Roy lives across the country and can't just zip places like Wally can), Bruce has his own thing going on, Barbara's... well. So Dick focusses on work, and wears himself out, and if Alfred comes by now and then and is impressed that the bedroom is tidy and the bed is made, that's just a bonus.

He likes it like this, he tells himself. Nobody gets hurt like this, he doesn't hurt anyone. 

It's getting kind of old, though, and if he was profiling himself he'd make a note of it.

***

It's a cold night in Gotham. On top of that, it's raining, and Dick is tired and wet. The streets are about as empty as his apartment, which is saying something. Gotham's criminal underworld is getting smart enough to come in out of the rain, he thinks, and the thought that the nefarious evildoers -- ha, Wally would like that, it sounds like something out of a comic book -- are smarter than he is makes him laugh. He spies a familiar shape on a rooftop overlooking an alley which is often used as a shortcut home from the club district to a student ghetto. It's actually the same alley he was headed for himself, a common haunt for muggers waiting for drunken victims wearing impractical shoes, but nobody's risking it tonight, not with those puddles. 

Robin looks freezing. Dick doubles back to the convenience store a block back, and grins at the clerk, who was not expecting any customers at all, let alone a masked vigilante. He grabs a coffee and fumbles through one of the pockets on his boots looking for change. Deceleration cables, spare spirit gum for the mask... change... change... He comes up with something the right size and shape to be a quarter, but it's a tracking device. 

"Hey," says the clerk. "You stopped someone robbing this place a few months back. It's on me."  
Dick smiles sheepishly at him. "Thanks."  
"Sure. It's a cold night, go home, get warm."

Dick says he'll do that and leaves, the bells attached to the door tinkling behind him. Bruce'd cringe at the lack of stealth, but it's not like the clerk didn't already know he was there. He makes sure the lid is firmly clamped down on the cup and scales a fire escape, and holds the cup out to Tim, whose look of surprise fills Dick with triumph. Nightwing or not, Tim isn't an easy one to sneak up on. 

"You look like you could use a warm up," says Dick.

***

Later, Dick sneaks out of the bedroom. Tim's conked out on the couch, and the rain's hammering the window. Dick sits on the floor, leans against the end of the couch, and falls asleep as well. 

In the morning, Tim's still there.


End file.
